Qualcomm will pull the plug on the Qualcomm Satellite on December 3. According to partner Iridium, satellite service for smartphones was ready, but very few manufacturers were interested. The companies continue to work together on unified satellite technology.

Matthew Desch, CEO of satellite company Iridium, is said to be disappointed that the collaboration with Qualcomm has not yielded results. says the man In a press release That smartphone manufacturers are still interested in satellite service targeting the consumer market and that the company is still open to cooperation with other partners.

Qualcomm has it The news is confirmed For the American news channel CNBC. A company spokesman said that smartphone manufacturers prefer standardized solutions, rather than proprietary technologies. Therefore, the company will continue to work with Iridium on unified satellite technology.

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Satellite in January this year. This relates to a service that allowed smartphone makers to send satellite messages via their phones. In the first phase, it was only possible to call in emergency situations, but Qualcomm also wanted to add a messaging service that worked with the user’s phone number.

Qualcomm teamed up with satellite company Iridium for this service and relied on that company’s low-Earth orbit satellites. Satellite service worked with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 sockets and an X70 modem. According to Qualcomm, smartphones powered by Snapdragon Satellite will be launched from the second half of 2023.

Qualcomm isn’t the only company working on a satellite service for smartphones. MediaTek announced at the beginning of 2023 that it is also working on its own satellite service for smartphones and that it will collaborate with Bullitt Group: the company that launches CAT smartphones, among others. In October 2022, Samsung announced its desire to enable satellite communications on smartphones. The company did so shortly after Apple announced a similar feature for the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro in September 2022. Tweakers wrote a seminal article about different satellite services for smartphones.